Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 4, 1993 TAG: 9307040066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Woman, waving book: "There must be some reason they've blacklisted this."
Man No. 1: "Who's this `they?' Who blacklisted it?"
Man No. 2, after long, scolding pause: "The government."
Well, who else? Get with the program; this is a UFO convention. Or symposium, rather. The 27th Annual Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) International Symposium.
Scoff if you wish, but more than 500 faithful UFOllowers have paid $50 each - plus lodging and air fare - to hear speakers from around the world deliver scholarly papers Saturday and today at the Hyatt Richmond.
There are Country Joe and the dudes with Harley hair and cascading beards; Brylcreemed Mr. Wizards with pocket protectors and taped-up horn-rimmed glasses; furtive guys with Secret Service suits and briefcases; black-clad men and women in haircuts that could be of alien origin. . . .
But even more of the MUFON members look like someone's aunt or grandfather or college roommate - which, of course, they are.
"We've probably got more Ph.D's than Virginia Tech," said Mark Blashak, state director for the Virginia chapter of MUFON. The group's advisory board lists almost 150 people with advanced or medical degrees.
Astrophysicist Illobrand von Ludwiger, for instance, traveled all the way from Munich to speak Saturday on "The Most Significant UFO Sightings in Germany," his clipped accent seeming all the more Freud-like because of his gray goatee and a habit of steepling his fingers while lecturing.
Other UFOlogist speakers came from Spain, Puerto Rico, China and the Harvard Medical School. Dr. John E. Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist and winner of a 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Lawrence of Arabia, has spent the past few years counseling people who claim to have been abducted by space aliens.
Sometimes, Mack told a packed ballroom, the aliens may take the form of helicopters or even animals such as horses and deer. Warning then that "the rest of what I'm going to talk about is going to be controversial," Mack went on to describe the spiritual awakening and renewal made possible through alien contact.
But that's highbrow stuff. Some attending Saturday were just looking for a little understanding. William C. Bishko, a 73-year-old machinery salesman from Richmond, stood in the hotel lobby holding a drawing of three blue circles spaced evenly on a big silver circle.
He explained that he was at a South Richmond swimming hole in 1952 when he heard a humming sound and looked up to see a spaceship like the one on his diagram. As soon as the ship noticed him, it rose and swooshed away on its side. "So they had to have swivel chairs, whoever was in there," he said.
Bishko had always kept mum about it, but now was earnestly buttonholing sympathetic listeners.
"I've been wanting to do this for years and years, and I figured this was my chance," he said. "I'm an old man now. . . . Maybe my time is up. I got certain things I want to accomplish before I cash in my chips, and this is one of them. And another one is - well, it's about a monster, and it happened a long time before this here. I can't tell you about that yet."
Bishko especially had to watch his tongue in the presence of the man standing behind him, the self-described "skunk at the garden party."
"I am the devil to the UFO believers," sneered Philip J. Klass, 73, of Washington, D.C. A retired editor for Aviation Week magazine, Klass publishes the bi-monthly "Skeptics UFO Newsletter" and goes to MUFON symposiums to taunt and rail at the paranormal establishment.
In a plum-colored sport coat, with reading glasses halfway down his nose like an irritated professor, the diminutive Klass shambled disapprovingly through displays of book titles such as "Pathways to the Gods," "UFO Conspiracy" and even "Jimi Hendrix: Star Child."
"The stories have gotten wilder and wilder," Klass said. "Those who want to believe have waited patiently year after year after year - now almost 50 years - and the public and the news media got tired of reporting simply about lights in the sky. So more dramatic stories were needed."
Abductions, alien-human hybrid babies, government conspiracies - if all that were true, Klass said, "this is the gravest threat to this republic since it was founded. . . . Why don't they report it to the FBI? Why don't they do something about it?"
Many MUFON members fall somewhere between Klass's ruthless doubt and Mack's religious zeal. "It's not like we're all a bunch of true believers, waiting for the space brothers to land," said Mike Hutcheson, 42, a Richmond equipment salesman. "I don't think most members take it all as gospel. They have a skeptical mind, an open mind."
They also seem to have an ardent need to believe UFOs are possible. Lorraine Gerber of Chattanooga, Tenn., walked by as Klass was talking and leaned over to say, "He is a debunker, but all he has produced is bunk."
Gerber, 61, said she learned through hypnosis therapy that she has been abducted by aliens several times during her life. Same for her daughter Mindy, 35, a registered nurse from New Jersey.
The aliens performed a "physical examination, mind-scan procedure, gynecological procedure, reproductive procedure - what many other abductees report. Nothing all that unusual," said Mindy Gerber.
Klass's ridicule made the elder Gerber almost physically upset. If there are no UFOs, then what is there?
"To hear him say it's not happening - I don't know how to explain that kind of confrontation. I don't know what to say," she said. "It not only destroys my entire belief system, but would throw me into almost chaos. . . . People need to have someone acknowledge that something is going on."
The MUFON symposium continues today, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Hyatt Richmond, 6624 W. Broad St. Admission to either of today's two sessions of talks is $10.
by CNB